Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA) has become one of the most prominent schemes for wireless communication systems. CDMA users are distinguished from one another by different code sequences. Due to the wide band nature of the CDMA signal, the receivers can be made robust against fading by exploiting the built-in time diversity using a rake receiver. In a coherent implementation of a rake receiver, a pilot signal is used to obtain the amplitude and phase estimates of the channel needed for coherent detection. As in the case of the IS-95 CDMA system, the pilot signal is designed to be orthogonal to the users' spreading codes so that in the rare case of no multipath dispersion, the pilot signal will not cause interference at the matched filter output for the desired user. However, if there is multipath dispersion, there will be unwanted interference at the matched filter output due to a variety of multipath components which are not orthogonal to the desired signal. Specifically, for a given multipath component of a desired traffic channel, its matched filter output will have unwanted contributions due to its other multipath components and the other multipath components of the other channels and the pilot signal. Since the pilot signal represents about 20 percent of the power of the downlink signal, its multipath components can be especially damaging to a desired user's bit decision via the near-far effect if the total number of active traffic channels is high. Undesirably, conventional rake receivers do not account for the interchannel multipath interference, and as a result, its performance suffers.